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Updated: Nov 16, 2025
Author Spotlight: Investigating Immune Cell Dynamics in the Tumor Microenvironment — Challenges and Innovations in Cancer Prognosis
Published on: April 12, 2024
Immune infiltrating cells in cholangiocarcinoma may become clinical diagnostic markers: based on bioinformatics
Yongwei Zhang1, Sihan Chen1, Jun Li1
1Department of General Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China.
Background:
Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) is a malignant tumor originating from the secondary bile duct and its branch epithelium. Among primary liver tumors, the incidence of ICC is second only to hepatocellular carcinoma. Tumor microenvironment can regulate the occurrence and development of tumors. This study is dedicated to finding more markers that can diagnose ICC by finding the differential tumor microenvironment cells between ICC and normal tissues.
Methods:
We wanted to study the infiltration of immune cells between the cholangiocarcinoma of the same patient and its paired non-tumor tissues, to explore the difference of immune cells in the tumor microenvironment and adjacent non-tumor tissues in the same organism. So, we searched the relevant data of patients with ICC from the GEO database and found that the GSE45001 data set meets our research needs. CIBERSORT database is used to calculate immune cell composition. Finally, perform visual analysis and data statistics to find out the differentially expressed immune cells.
Results:
We found that the expression levels of dendritic cells activated, macrophages M2, and T cells regulatory (Tregs) in ICC were higher than normal tissues, and the expression levels of macrophages M1, monocytes, and T cells follicular helper in ICC were lower than normal tissues.
Conclusion:
These 6 types of immune cells are expected to become molecular markers for clinical diagnosis of ICC.
